


Musketeer Blues

by Alex_deMorra (Ergo_Sum)



Series: Fence Sitter [4]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-28
Updated: 2016-09-28
Packaged: 2018-08-18 06:49:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8152859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ergo_Sum/pseuds/Alex_deMorra
Summary: Chapter 4: Fence SitterMicah has some definite ideas about what he wants to look like as he enters kindergarten and his parents don't agree.





	1. Chapter 1

Larissa scooped up another bundle of my hair and combed it between her fingers before she pulled it straight out, clamped it down between the two bits of metal and twirled it inwards until the steaming hot tube almost touched my head.

In the meantime, the rest of my attention was split between Grover, who was in black and white, huffing and puffing, in his shrill, thrill me to bits muppet voice, “twenty-eight [puff, huff, puff], twenty nine, thirty [huff]…there _better_ be something exciting at the top,” and the crunchy green and yellow shag carpet in our living room that prickled my bottom through my pajama pants.

“I wish I had your hair, Micah. I would do this every day.”

I tipped my head all the way back so that my hair tickled the bottom part of my back. It felt different after each _clak-clak-clak-clak_ that the iron made as it released each big, fat, hot, fresh spiral that fell and spread it’s heat over that part of my head and all over the skin on the back part of me.

Larissa picked up the next clump of hair while the show changed to a cartoon that wanted me to say the words _entrada_ and _salida_ , which I said aloud, repeatedly, and in pairs all the way until the last part of the program ( _W is for Willamena)_ came on. By house rules, I was supposed to be more than two feet away from the TV, but Larissa’s curling iron cord was too short to sit further and mom was busy at the kitchen table talking with Larissa’s stepmom Trish about me, “I can’t get him into the local first grade early but I found a school that will take him early and then he’s in the system.”

I neither knew or cared about what that meant, especially because Larissa finished practicing on me and my entire head bounced like a trampoline.

“Do I look like the guy?” We both knew meant the guy she showed me in the magazine.

“Micah, you _sooo_ look like the guy. Check it out.” She gave me a mirror with a plastic handle for me to hold still while she waved a small silver one all around my head. I could see how she made me look like the singer with dark brown spirals who wore only black vests or big white pirate shirts. It was the guy she was so i-n-l-o-v-e-w-i-t-h.

“Um. Larissa. So if I look like him, my dad isn’t going to say I look like a girl, right?”

“No way. You’re like a total boy and, besides, you look like a rock star.”

“Cool. But, maybe I look like a pirate, too.”

“I suppose so…but, oh man, you know what?”

“What?”

“You’d be the best dang pirate or … maybe … one of those musketeers.” Larissa unplugged the iron and put it in a safe place before going to our bookshelf, which was an entire wall more than a shelf, to find the section with the books that I would grow into, the shelf with a series of books that were all the same height and the same kind of writing on the shiny white covers. She pulled out the book next to Black Beauty and on the front was a drawing of three men in big hats, brandishing big swords, wearing pirate-y clothes and capes.

All of them had long, curly hair.

We shared a moment of wonderful conspiracy. “You need a cape,” she said.

“And a sword,” I said.

I grabbed her hand and drug her to my room, the one I shared with my little brother, to find anything that could make me look like a pirate. We found some clothes that looked normal by themselves but then we found an old belt and some bandanas and she fashioned a cape from a towel and for a sword, I had my whiffle ball bat, which was totally the wrong shape but the right size. No one would be able to miss what it was supposed to be.

I wondered if Tyrell knew how to play musketeers. If not, we knew how to play pirates. I was so excited to show him but she wanted to show my mom first so we stood at the opening of the hallway where my mom and her stepmom could see us from the kitchen table.

“Well, what’s this?” My mom looked back and forth between Larissa and me with that tight sort of smile that barely reached her eyes. It was the type of smile she’d give when she didn’t think she should give me a real one.

I held my whiffle ball sword high in the air and declared, “I’m a musketeer!”

Larissa whispered behind me, “Tell ‘em which one.”

“Porthos!”

Then she gave me a high five.

Then dad came home, I jumped in his way, and I challenged him, “On guard!” and proceeded to do battle with his briefcase. He quickly lost and died, leaving Larissa and I to go out to the neighborhood to find more people to challenge, especially Tyrell who was going to flip when he saw me.

On our way out, I heard dad saying something about it being time to invite his mother over.

That grandma was named Grandma Rebecca and she was not the good one. In fact, she was most firmly on my do-not-like list. I didn’t even like thinking about her. So I didn’t. I instantly forgot about the high probability of Grandma Rebecca in my near future and I continued to forget about it until the near future had arrived, which was late afternoon the next day.

“Love baby!” She grabbed my cheeks in one hand, gave me a weird sloppy kiss on the cheek, and twirled into the house in her rose pink wrap-around skirt over her ballerina leotard with high heeled dance shoes. In my head, my mom was making an alligator mouth with her hand and we were secretly laughed, though we’d never actually do that to grandma’s face.

Especially when she was so excited as she talked at us (I don’t know how for how long but it was a long time) about her Jitterbug classes. And how everyone thinks she is so energetic and funny for a grandmother. And how my mom should really start to work out more than she does because my mom “could be so beautiful if she were only thirty pounds thinner.”

That was her thing.

One of them anyway.

The first time I figured it out was when we were listening to the radio on a Saturday morning and I was doing my chores which involved spraying and wiping off furniture polish — which reminded me a little of whipped cream until I tasted it — on the big wood things in the room we never used. “Elvis, my _god_ he was so beautiful until he got fat. You’ve never seen such a beautiful man,” she would wheeze, her eyes focused somewhere in the far distance like maybe in the clouds even though she was still under our roof. “Except your father. He’s gorgeous. Micah, baby, you are so lucky to have your father’s looks. You are going to have women falling all over you some day.”

Anyway, she was here now.

I knew that she saw me but I didn’t think she really counted on my sticking around. I kept my mouth shut, and nodded, and I took really small steps backwards toward the front door. My chance for escape was thwarted with my mom’s warning, “Where do you think you’re going, young man?”

“To play. You always tell me to go play outside. So, I’m just going to take your advice and make sure that I…”

I knew it was a long shot even as I said it. She shut me down with a quick, short, shake of her head, and lured me back toward her with a crooked finger. My grandma was in the midst of transitioning from grandma to hair stylist, which is one of the several things she was licensed for. She unrolled a tube of fabric into a strip that had all these metal things strapped down with elastic bands.

“What’s this?” I ask, fearing both the sharp steel scissors and the implications that came with them. “Larissa cuts my hair. She knows what I like. I’m sure she can come over if we ask nicely.”

My mom put on a weird sing-song voice — she is not a sing-song voice sort of person — and told me, “We’re going to do this today.”

“No,” I protested, raising my chin in confidence as I did so. She and dad always told me to speak up. I never spoke up enough. My other grandma knows I can be shy but she knows that I spoke up when it mattered and this mattered. Maybe this was a test. “I don’t think so. Only Larissa can cut my hair. She’s the only one who knows how to do it right.”

“Micah, you’re starting at a new school next week. Don’t you want to look your best?”

“Larissa can make me look my best.”

“Look, you’re going to hurt your grandmother’s feelings. She came all the way over here to do this. Now, whatever Larissa can do your grandmother can to better. She teaches people like Larissa how to do her job.”

I happen to know that this grandma only lives a few minutes away by car. Not like my other grandma who lives the time it takes to drive to Disneyland and then the same amount of time again to get to her house. So, _coming all the way over_ was not a big deal.

And if it was such a big deal, we should have just asked Larissa, who lives next door. What if she was home right now? I should go get her…

My mom blocked my way.

This was not going well for me and I had a really, really bad feeling even as my grandmother attempted to soothe me, “You’re going to be the most stylish young man in your whole class. I promise. I’m going to give you the haircut that all the boys want.”

I wanted what I wanted and I wanted my hair exactly the way it was. I shook my head just like my Scooby-Do bobble head. My mom grabbed me by my shoulders and backed me up so that the blue and green flower covered vinyl kitchen chair caught behind my knees and landed me in the same chair but on my butt. She warned, “Micah, do not fight me on this. You need a haircut and it is happening today.”

“She’s not going to take it off, right? I look like a rock star, mom. I want to look like _the guy_ on the first day of school.”

She didn’t say anything.

“Mom?” My heart started beating harder and my breathing got faster and the blood drained out of my cheeks and the wrinkles near my eyebrows made my forehead hurt. “I don’t want this, mom. I don’t.” I felt the catch in my throat almost stop me from getting those last few words out.

“Micah, sometimes we have to do things we don’t like. I’m sorry. But, you’ll like it. I think you really will.”

I already hated it.

My grandma squirted my hair with a fine mist of water and combed it with this steel contraption that felt like metal nails running through my scalp, causing a weird echo to go all the way through my bones.”

I sat there with my fingernails squeezed into the bottom seam of the plastic piping on the chair, and my thumbs pressed into the industrial staples so hard that I could only focus on that and nothing else.

Cold drips of water fell down my neck. It made me shiver and got the top of my shirt wet and the longer I sat, the warmer it got from my body heat. It was gross and sticky.

And that wasn’t all.

Water went in my ears and down into my eyes, too. This would never happen with Larissa. Larissa always kept the water out of my eyes and she always kept my shirt dry.

“Micah,” my mom complained, as she watched every snip, “stop with the face already.”

What face? This is my face and it is showing what I’m feeling right now. I glared at her and then I dropped my eyes and continued to _not say anything_. I pressed harder into the staples under the tape over the wood on the bottom of the chair I was sitting on.

The fine metal edge of the thing grandma held in two fingers skated along the top of my neck. I scrunched my eyes hoping, beyond all hope, that this was an accident. She wasn’t actually cutting there. She just, you know, when you held onto something and sometimes it had a mind of it’s own, and then you went back to finish what you were doing.

But then I felt the prickly bits of short hair along the back of my neck, like the stinging nettles that leave painful red bumps.

“Would you look at that, Love Baby! Gorgeous. We can see your face again.” My head was briefly covered with a towel and I could feel long nails digging too hard across my head. Then it was removed along with the one around my shoulders. My mean, evil grandma and my mother, who was becoming more mean and evil by the second, looked down at me smiling as if some great thing happened. Mom said, “I looks nice, honey.”

I stood up.

I was shaky in my knees.

My mom told me to go take a shower. She said it would feel good to get rid of the extra bits of hair that stuck to me. As I walked down the hall, I heard them congratulate each other, my mom was thanking my grandmother, my grandmother was thanking her for letting her do it, “I don’t see them enough, Suzie. I would love to…” my grandmother’s voice faded as I went into the bathroom.

Not my bathroom. Not the one in the main hallway. I went to my Grandpa Frank and Grandma Olga’s bathroom. The one located at the very back, very farthest part of the house. The one that was attached to the bedroom they stayed in when they came _all the way over_ to visit me because for them, it really was a long way.

I walked through the room and into the bathroom and I kept the light off and I shut the door and I locked it. And I stayed there a minute because I knew, I knew, I already knew that I couldn’t feel the weight of the curls from yesterday. I knew that if I tipped my head backward there wouldn’t be anything left to tickle my back. But I didn’t want to see it because that would somehow make it final and real in a way that it wasn’t yet.

After I waited forever with my forehead absorbing the cool from the white paint on the solid wood next to where the bathroom door opened before I got up the nerve to finally look at myself.

I turned the light on and I turned around.

It was gone.

My hair was all gone.

All of it.

All the parts that I liked.

I watched my face as my chin freckled up in a wobble and tears dripped down my face. It was my ugly face. That’s what my mom calls it when it got like this. But I couldn’t help it and, honestly, I felt justified it having an ugly face right now.

My grandmother turned my hair into Henry Higgins hair and I hate Henry Higgins. He’s so boring and the best thing he ever did was to visit someone who made donuts and not even the good kind that they had at Winchells.

I had nerd hair from the 1950’s.

My life was over.

I watched my life as I had to start at a new school where no one would like me and Tyrell wasn’t even with me and…oh, it was horrible.

My whole body shook and then I cried for real.

I cried in the shower. The tiles echoed my coughs and my splutters. I cried when I turned off the water, my tears replacing the clean water I had just washed with. I cried when I dried off and I had to keep my face in the towel.

And I stayed there.

My mom knocked on the door, “Micah, you’re being rude. Stop this.”

“I can’t.”

“Micah. Come out.”

“No. I can’t.”

“You are hurting your grandmother.”

“I’m so ugly now,” I wailed at the top of my voice. Then I cried all over again.

A few minutes later, my grandmother came back, “Love baby, let me see you.”

I watched my red splotchy streaky face shaking _no_ and then I squeaked out the same word. She kept talking, I didn’t know about what, and I was grateful when I heard her walk away.

Later that night, my mom came back and politely knocked on the door, and she requested that I come to dinner. “I’m not hungry.”

I was always hungry and I was always the kid to eat every last drop on my plate. My little brother? Not so much. But I wasn’t hungry and I couldn’t have eaten a bite if I tried.

Then my dad pounded on the door. I didn’t know he’d even come home yet. He shouted about smacking me with his belt — the one that he said always hurt him more than it hurt me even though his hand was never as red as my bottom when he was done.

At the moment, though, I didn’t care about his stupid belt or even that he might smack me harder or longer because I didn’t open the door. He finally got fed up and said as he walked away, “Waste away, Micah. See if I care.”

I knew he didn’t and, even if he did, it wouldn’t make me come out. I stayed there all night. I didn’t even remember falling asleep.

But when I woke up the next morning, I wasn’t on the floor of my bathroom anymore. I was in my bed wearing my fire engine pajamas with the dalmatians on them.

I walked into my grandma and grandpa’s room and over to the bathroom where I had spend most of yesterday. The entire doorknob was missing and I could see through the hole in the door and if someone was going to the bathroom, I would see that too.

A quick glance in the mirror told me that my hair still looked awful.

But I had a trick.

I lifted my pajama shirt over my head so that the neck of it was at my forehead and the sleeves and torso hung down my back longer than my real hair had ever been. Three strands. It wasn’t as nice as before and Larissa wouldn’t be able to curl it again but at least it was long and I could feel it all the way down my back.

My mom found me in front of the mirror. The look I gave her, well, it wasn’t very nice but I was mad and I was going to be mad for a very long time.

“Would you take your shirt off your head, Micah?”

“It’s my hair. I can’t take it off.”

“Micah,” she was frustrated with me, I could tell. “You are not going to your new kindergarten with a shirt on your head.”

“Yes. I am. Everyone will be jealous.”

“No, honey. They won’t.” She took a deep breath and popped her cheeks out at me. Most of the times I would pop my cheeks out, too and then we’d smash each other’s cheeks so that air would rush out like an open balloon. But I didn’t feel like doing that thing right now. “When you’re a grown up, you can do what you want. But not now.”

“Why not?”

“Why not what?”

“Why can’t I have long hair? What was wrong with the way I had it?”

“You need to look like a boy, honey. You’re going to want to fit in. I promise.”

“But you always tell me not to judge someone based on the way they look so why would someone judge me on the way I look? If they don’t like me the way I am, they…they’re just stupid and I don’t want to be their friend. I thought that’s what you told me.”

“I’m sorry you don’t like your hair.”

“I am mad. I’m really mad at you and I hate her and I want my hair back,” I grumped, with arms folded across me, my eyes were firmly not on her.

“Tell you what. As long as you have your new hair cut when you’re at school and when you’re with your dad, you can wear this all the other times you’re home.” And she handed me back my shirt.

It didn’t feel like much of a win. But it didn’t feel like I had any other choice, either. Not as long as I was living under their roof, with all of _their stupid rules_ that just kept on growing and growing.

If I was old enough to leave home to go to school, I was old enough to leave home for good. That’s exactly what I was going to do.

I just needed a plan.

I would leave and they would never see me again and then they’d be sorry.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Micah runs away.

I stole three Twinkies from the 7-11 this morning. I did it when mom was at the counter buying milk. At first, I was only going to take one. But once I thought about it, I realized it would be better if I had one for now, one for later, and one for Tyrell. He wasn’t going to run away with me but I wanted to give him something before I left for good.

My plans were almost finished. All I had left to do was to pack. The new pants my mom bought for school were in one pile and the shirts were in another pile and all of the tags were still on them because they weren’t supposed to come off until they were worn for the first time.

Mom poked her head in the room earlier. She was getting my little brother but she was also curious about what I was doing. I told her I was matching up outfits for the first week at school.

But that was a lie.

I was trying to figure out if I should bring my new clothes with me or whether I should stick to my old clothes. I liked my new clothes but if I took them and they had their tags on, that would be stealing and I could get arrested. At the same time, if I was already gone and the clothes stayed here then mom could return them and get her money back.

That settled that.

I pushed all the new clothes to the side and started going through my drawers to figure out which of my old things to bring. I started with underwear because that’s the most important thing — to have clean underwear. Then I found socks. Then my swimming suit. Then my warm, fuzzy hat with ears because ina few months it would be cold and I would need it. I only had enough room for two shirts and another pair of pants before my bag was full and almost too big to carry.

The shower turned on upstairs.

This was my moment.

I grabbed my bag with clothes and a folded over brown paper bag that I had packed up this morning. It had all of my favorite toys and Tyrell agreed to hold on to them for me. Lilybelle was on my shoulder and promised that she would be my traveling companion and that she would help to keep me safe. I already knew that I had all I needed but I still took one last look around before I opened the sliding glass door and went into the back yard and through the back gate and down a few houses to Tyrell’s.

When I got there, I quietly opened the metal latch and slipped into his back yard and I went to the secret place where we left things for each other. I opened the bag I was going to leave for him and put his Twinkie inside the bag on the very top of all the toys before leaving it there.

He left me something, too. A brown bag lunch with Cheetos (mom never let me have them), two juice boxes, and a pb & j with grape (not strawberry) jelly. He also left me his Matchbox red and white Pontiac Fiero, which was his favorite and also mine.

Lastly, he made me a drawing of John Thunder, my favorite Centurion, who had super stealth powers and could ride horses. Tyrell and I had a long discussion about me having to take on a _new identity_ as part of my new life and because not many people knew about John Thunder or about his powers, I could probably be him. So, this picture, which Tyrell made it look as much like me as it did the real John Thunder, was really more of a future identity card that I could use until I was old enough to have a proper drivers license.

We thought of everything.

I left Tyrell’s back yard as quickly and as quietly as I arrived. Once I latched up the gate, I ran down the alley in order to take advantage of the time I had before my absence was detected.

The plan was to get to the good grandparents house. I didn’t know how soon because I couldn’t talk to strangers nor could I accept rides from them and I only knew how long it would take to get there by car. Once I got there, they would help me. I knew it. And even if they didn’t, or they couldn’t, I’d still have a big head start to figure out where I could find an abandoned log cabin in the woods somewhere.

For the first part of my journey, I kept to the main roads in order to make the fastest time. After four blocks, I wasn’t sure if they knew I was missing yet so I startedwalking close to bushes so that I could hide if I needed to.

That happened just in time because soon after that, Lilybelle wiggled her caterpillar fuzz and told me that I needed to hide. I jumped behind a brick wall that was almost as big as me and nestled under some plants with strong smelling big white flowers. Beyond the branches, our car drove by really slowly. The windows were rolled down and I could see that my mom’s hair was still wet from the shower. She was shouting my name over and over like a big, sad question, “Micah?”

I felt bad for a moment and then remembered that she already had her chance. She and I would no longer be able to live under the same roof and she should have thought of that before she did what she did. Because consequences.

I stayed put until I heard the last of the _putt-putt_ of her car disappear around the corner.

So I have this information.

They knew I was missing.

I had to be smarter and cleverer than usual in order to get to my destination. Like Yogi Bear when he tried to get past the ranger.

No.

Like John Thunder when he defeated Doc Terror.

_Activate stealth mode._

From here on in, I needed to stay hidden. It would be slow going but I knew how it had to happen. To get to the end of this block, it look as long as the first four. But I wasn’t caught, and that was the most important part.

Then I remembered something. I remembered how the fence from the front of our yard went into the back yard and how there was another gate from the back yard to the alley. Not all the houses had this but a lot of them did. That’s when I started making good time again. I was cutting through blocks almost as fast as I would if I had my trusty Thunder Knife.

_Hide Micah_. Lilybelle was all over surveillance today. I had just enough time to hide under a tarp before another vehicle drove by.

Oh no! It’s the police! And, they were saying my name over a bullhorn.

I was dead, I was dead, I was so dead.

I had planned on cutting across the mesa because I liked stepping on the crunchy bits of dried mud and because it would take me right to the community center. But now I couldn’t because I didn’t want to be spotted.

Instead, I had to keep weaving around the houses, which took at least five times as long. It was hot, too. I needed a juice box but I couldn’t stop yet.

I kept going and once a dog started barking really loud. I thought that was going to be the end of me.

But no.

It wasn’t.

Finally, I saw the community center. The front door was open but there were a lot of people there so I crawled the perimeter and saw the open doors at the side. One of them went into an office and another one went into the classroom where I took gymnastics in the afternoon. I surveyed the territory by sweeping my gaze side to side. I saw no one. So I ran as fast as I could to the open doors.

I shot right into the office but I saw someone’s legs under one of the desks on the far side of the room. So I saved myself at the last second and darted right back out. I turned in a super stealth maneuver and got inside the classroom where there was not only no one there but the door to the storage closet was open.

Perfect.

I ran in to the closet and made a big triangle with the puffy mats made for doing somersaults on. I closed the door behind me. It was dark but there was enough light for me to take out my lunch. I really wanted to scarf the whole thing down but it occurred to me for the first time that this was the only meal I had for a long time so I had only some juice and part of my sandwich before I packed it away again.

By then, it started getting warm in there and I was sleepy and I needed to regroup.

The police.

I hadn’t thought that the police would come after me. Not if I didn’t take the new clothes. This was going to make my trip so much harder.

That’s what I was thinking as Lilybelle and I drifted off into naps.

I woke sometime later. It was dark and it was still. I also needed to pee. I pressed the inside of the handle but it wouldn’t go down. I tried harder. Nothing.

I was locked in.

I felt around the handle to see if there was one of those turn thingies like there is in the bathroom to unlock the door from the inside. But there wasn’t. Nor was there a space for a key to fit. Not that I had the things to pick a lock from the inside but now I don’t even have the chance to try to figure it out.

I really had to pee.

I crossed my legs hard and had a secret, silent discussion with Lilybelle about what to do next. She crawled under the door and was going to see if she could open it from the other side. I had to be patient because she was a caterpillar and everyone knew how long it would take for a caterpillar to crawl up a door.

Forever.

So I waited forever. Then I heard her tell me, _Micah, it’s too heavy._

So I told her, _Sit on the end, Lilybelle. It’s easier there. Then try jumping up and down.”_

I waited.

_I can’t Micah. It’s too big. I have to go for help._

I crossed my legs and bounced a little. It was the sort of thing that made me feel a bit better, though if I thought about it, it actually made me need to go more. I held on. And then I held on with my hands too, because that really did help.

Now, I was lonely because Lilybelle left and Tyrell was probably still at home.

I took out the red and white Pontiac Fiero and rolled the wheels up and down on my leg. I imagined how great it would be for it to make the big jump over my knee and I bet myself that it would probably make it all the way to the door but I didn’t want to actually let go in case I’d never be able to find it again.

I wondered how long I’d stay alive in this closet.

I wondered if they’d be more sorry if I died than if I had just run away.

I thought that maybe they would be.

And that made me happy.

I wondered if they would tell my little brother about me when he was bigger and if they would tell the story about their big mistake of allowing our evil grandmother to cut off all my pirate, rockstar hair and how I would have been alive today if they just loved me the way I deserved to be loved.

I bet they’d cry.

They might even cry as much as I did yesterday when I was in the shower washing all the last bits away.

No. I don’t think they can cry that much.

I squeezed my legs again and tried to go back to sleep and even succeeded for a little while until there was a big commotion outside the door with lots of feet and keys jangling and a dog sniffing at the bottom of the door.

The nice lady (she reminds me of Miss Pickle but I don’t think that was actually her name) from the front desk asked me through the door, “Micah, if you’re in here, I’m going to let you out, okay? And then we can have a nice talk.”

All of a sudden, I was scared.

I was caught.

I hid deeper inside the triangle made by the cushy pad, stuck between trying to hide harder and running out quickly to the bathroom with a lock on it and windows to the outside in order to pee and then escape to freedom. I thought I’d be able to run but when the door opened, I had discovered that I was frozen in place.

“Micah?” Miss Pickle called.

Behind Miss Pickle’s voice were the beeps and _kkcch_ white noise sounds of a police radio and behind that was the sound of a dog’s paws as they clicked further and further and out of the room. I felt the shuffle of gymnastics pads being removed one at a time. I pressed my lips together and made my body into cement and I _did not move_ even as my protection was slowly being dismantled.

The last pad was taken away and there was Miss Pickle on her knee with one hand outstretched and two police officers, each as big as the Hulk and at least as scary. One of them had eyes that looked like they were lined in black, which made his eyes look super blue and magical and that made me like him a little bit more. He spoke unlike anyone I had heard before. It was like he was holding his nose shut even as his voice danced quickly as it stopped longer to hover over all the o’s, “Come on out son. You’ve worried your parents, now you have.”

My hair was stuck to my face and my eyes were frozen open and my dreams of dashing out to freedom were squashed.

And I really had to pee.

I crawled out in defeat with my clothes in a bag over my shoulders and my lunch (complete with my John Thunder drawing and red and white Pontiac Fiero) in a crumpled lunch paper bag in my left hand that Lilybelle wiggled up in order to return to my shoulder.

The police officer that I didn’t like as much as the one who talked directly to me pressed a button on the black thing on his shoulder and said, “We got him. Tell the parents we’re bringing him back home.”

I rode in the back seat of the police car, which wasn’t as exciting as it sounded like. They didn’t even have the siren on. It was awful when they opened up the car door when we got back to in front of my house and even worse when I had to thank Officer Taylor and Officer Molloy for whatever it was that they did.

As soon as I did, I made a beeline for the bathroom because in all this time, I still didn’t get a chance to go. Before I was there, Grandma Rebecca grabbed my arm, her nails dug deep into my skin and she pinned me in place. Her face got close up to mine so that I could see and smell her thick make up with her eyelashes like cactus spines and ugly green eyes and her flat orange colored lips. She hissed at me like she was a snake, “When did you become a spoiled little brat? Do you know how scared you made your father. Do you?”

“I need the bathroom.”

“Like hell, young man. You are not going to pull that same stunt you pulled yesterday.”

She kept me there, not even letting me go with the door open. She made me wait and she stayed there holding me in place with her stupid nails in my arm until my parents were done speaking with the police.

But by then, it was too late. I wasn’t able to hold it any longer. I had already peed my pants like a little kid.


End file.
